Page 88 of Knowing Mr. Darcy
“Well, quite bad,” said Elizabeth. “It’s a dreadful sin, and if anyone knew, it would… no one can know.”
“You didnot!” Jane gasped. “You allowed him to…” She trailed off meaningfully.
Elizabeth nodded. “I did, Jane.” She cringed again.
“I thought, when you alighted from that carriage, that the two of you looked as if you’d been doing somethingverysinful.”
“Did we truly? You think everyone else thought so?”
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “Of course, every time he looks at you, Lizzy, even back in Hertfordshire, it’s as if he’s committing some kind of carnal sin with you in his mind.”
“It is not!”
Jane shrugged. “I think it is.”
Elizabeth snorted.
Jane giggled. She lifted her shoulders. “Was it as terrible as they say it is?”
“Not even a little bit terrible,” said Elizabeth. “It was… oh, Jane, it was… well, if pleasure is sin, I see why that’s such a sin.”
“But you do think he will marry you. You are positive of that.”
“Oh, yes,” said Elizabeth. “He’s a very honorable man. He will always do what he thinks is right, even if it is not easy.”
“And you’re sure of that,” said Jane.
Elizabeth considered. It was only a short time ago that she was saying that she did not know him. However, sherealized she must have known his character all along, that it had been slowly revealed to her in bits and pieces as they grew to know each other better. Yes, he was an honorable man, her Mr. Darcy. Yes, she knew him after all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE WEDDINGS HAPPENEDwithin weeks of each other.
Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth married first, but Wickham married Lydia only the next weekend. Jane finally acquiesced to marry Mr. Bingley at Lydia’s wedding, and then it was only a few weeks more before they had married as well.
Caroline Bingley did not attend any of the weddings, however. It was reported that she had gone to Gretna Green with a man who was not Mr. Higgins, but was, in fact, some Spanish vizcondel. The fellow had apparently skipped out with Caroline the morning he was supposed to have appeared at dawn to fight a duel with Higgins (likely over Caroline) and now, Caroline was on her way to Spain with him to hopefully live happily ever after.
The good news was, if she still cared about ruining Mr. Darcy for revenge, she seemed to have been distracted from the task.
Elizabeth and her husband spent the first weeks after their wedding doing almost nothing except talking. They talked of everything. They spoke about books and poetry and the bible and philosophy and morality, and they probed the other’s stances, taking each other’s measure, wanting to know everything about the other.
Well, they talked and also did… other things.
Thosesorts of things. They did happen in a bed, withouttheir clothes, not like the way it had been in the carriage, both of them mostly covered.
And he did make her scream.
Or perhaps she simply allowed herself to scream.
She was very pleased with it, but he seemed worried, sometimes holding her in his arms and asking her all manner of questions. She had liked whatever it was he had done with his fingers or his tongue or his…that, hadn’t she? He could adjust these things if she didn’t like it. He could try harder. Or less hard. Or hard sometimes and other times gentle. He could doanythingshe wanted.
And she would laugh and shake her head at him, because he was Mr. Darcy of Pemberley and she did not understand how he could possiblybeinsecure.
One night, in the darkness, in the wake of one of these conversations, in which he had snorted and said jocularly that he was not even remotely insecure, it was only that she was difficult to please, she had laughed and tickled him. That night, he had stopped the tickling, gasping with laughter. He had rolled her beneath him, trapping her wrists above her head, and they had gotten distracted with kissing. Kissing each other’s mouths and then each other’s jaws and necks and shoulders and that had led to another bout of lovemaking.
But then, after the second time she’d burst against him—died the little death—in the silent stillness of the night, her body flush against his, he said, “I suppose I don’t know if I trust it, perhaps?”
“Trust what?” she whispered.
